Rules for Being a Girl - Candace Bushnell Page 0,46
ears. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, totally.” Gray shrugs. “I just wanted to check on you, I guess. I mean, not that you can’t take care of yourself or anything, but I wanted to make sure you were hanging in there after . . .” He trails off, a little awkwardly. “You know. After.”
I raise my eyebrows and smile. “You could have done that over text,” I point out.
Gray nods. “I could have,” he agrees. “I didn’t want to.”
“Oh no?” I’m grinning for real now, I can’t help it. I’ve never met anyone like him before. “Why not?”
Gray’s fingertips brush the hem of my coat, just lightly. “You know why not.”
“Well. I’m glad you did.” I look down at my fuzzy slippers, suddenly shy. “I’m okay, I guess. I feel a little bit like I just made the biggest mistake of my life, possibly? But other than that, super.”
“It wasn’t a mistake,” Gray says immediately. “I mean, easy for me to say, right? But I don’t think it’s ever a mistake to tell the truth.”
It is easy for him to say, probably. Still, I appreciate the sentiment.
“Maybe not,” I allow. But then I think of the look on Chloe’s face this morning, the whispers that followed me down the hallway. “It just feels like the truth didn’t mean anything, you know? Like I put myself out there, I opened myself up to all this shit, everybody staring at me and making their judgments, and it didn’t even change anything.”
Gray considers that. “Maybe not,” he says. “But it kind of changed you, right?”
That stops me; I’m quiet for a moment, turning it over in my mind. On one hand, there’s no silver lining here—it’s not like I’m glad this all happened, but I guess it’s true that I’m tougher than I was a couple of months ago. It’s true that I see things differently now.
“Maybe,” I say again, shivering a little in the bitter cold.
“Come here,” Gray says; for a moment I think he’s going to kiss me, but in the end he just wraps me in his arms. We stand there for a long time in the glow of the porch light, the winter wind calling down the empty street.
Twenty-Four
I barely sleep that night, picking half-heartedly at an Eggo on my ride to school the following morning and letting my coffee go cold in the cup holder. I may have been ready to raise hell in the kitchen of my parents’ house last night, but this morning all I want is to run right out the door and disappear into the woods behind the football field. Forget switching classes, I think miserably. At this point I’m ready to try homeschooling for the rest of the year.
Gray finds me in the hallway before third period. “Hey,” he says, reaching for my hand and squeezing. “How you doing?”
“Me?” I paste the world’s fakest smile on my face, then realize it’s just Gray and let it melt into an exaggerated grimace, crossing my eyes and baring my teeth. “I’m super. Why, do I not look super?”
“Oh no, totally super,” Gray says grandly, bumping his shoulder against mine before we head inside and take our seats. I tell myself I’m imagining the low murmurs as I make my way down the aisle. Chloe, meanwhile, will barely look at me.
“Hey,” I try, kicking lightly at her chair from across the aisle; she offers me a smile even faker than the one I tried on Gray a minute ago, then turns back to her bullet journal. I sigh and pull my notebook out of my bag.
Bex isn’t in class by the time the bell rings for the start of the class period. For a second I let myself hope for dorky Mr. Haddock, but a moment later Bex strolls through the door with his reusable coffee cup in hand, like possibly he was lurking outside in the hallway just waiting for the exact right time to make his entrance.
“There he is,” Dean calls, slouched in his chair near the window. “Thought you abandoned us, man.”
Bex flashes the dimple in his cheek, easy. “Me?” he asks, all innocence. “Never.”
He’s wearing dark khakis and one of his signature chambray shirts, a fresh new haircut that makes him look even younger than usual.
“Now, tell me: did you guys manage to actually learn anything yesterday, or not so much?”
He takes attendance and asks if anybody’s read anything good lately, just like always, then opens up a detailed discussion of some Joyce story with